


Five Times Eddie and Richie Kissed

by little_ogre



Category: IT (1990), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (one use of the f word), Five Times, IT-1990 miniseries characters, Kisses, M/M, Period-Typical Homophobia, Reddie, Slow Burn, set in the 60s and 90s
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-10
Updated: 2018-11-11
Packaged: 2019-08-21 14:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16578248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/little_ogre/pseuds/little_ogre
Summary: Five Times Eddie and Richie Kissed, plus one.Does pretty much what is says on the tin."Eddie was pretty sure it was true love, but he was also pretty sure Juliet never had to push Romeo out of her window frantically saying “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off that's my mom’s alarm downstairs. Would you please fuck off right now,” while Romeo tried to lick her eyebrows."





	1. First and Second Kiss

**Author's Note:**

> In the process of writing this I found that I had spelled "Kaspbrak" four different ways. In the same document.

1.

The first kiss was accidental, and in no way indicative of any sort of future pattern.

 

At the end of that summer Beverly left Derry to live with her aunt in Chicago, her bags packed and waiting at the bus stop for the Greyhound to take her away. She had hugged them all and kissed them on the cheek and said that she would write and call. Eddie didn’t know it then but she never would, as soon as she left it would be as if she had dropped off the face of the earth. He had missed her like a limb, like something precious that had been lost.

 

Right then and there Beverly looked near to crying and probably they all were, because Richie, in an attempt to make them laugh, and probably out of fear of genuine emotion, started re-enacting even more exaggerated farewell scenes. He was throwing himself around Bill’s neck, kissing him on both cheeks, calling him _bubeleh_ (which Stan said was Offensive), acting like a silly old grandma saying goodbye to her favourite grandchild. Mostly running on steam he managed to peck both Mike and Stan on the cheek before throwing his arms around Eddie; who stepped back in protest, and with unfortunate timing, turned his head in the last minute, meaning the kiss meant for his cheek now landed squarely on his mouth (since it had made all the losers laugh - even Beverly, wet and tearstained - Eddie secretly considered it a worthy sacrifice).

 

“Oh _Eddie_ , gimme that sugar!” Richie exclaimed and waggled his eyebrows at him and Eddie elbowed him in the ribs, trying to ignore the strange sensation in his mouth, and the terrible realisation that this was his first kiss, from somebody other than his mother.

 

Going home Richie tucked Eddie tight under his arm, leaning his chin against the top of his head. Eddie violently chucked him off, complaining about his mussed hair but he only reeled him back in again and held on, and after a little while Eddie wrapped his arm around Richie’s waist and leaned right back.

 

 

2.

The second time Riche kissed Eddie he was thirteen, in the men's bathroom at the Paramount Theatre, between double features.  

 

Richie was still eating leftover popcorn, Bill was in the can and Eddie was washing his hands for the third time. Richie was halfway through a long, complicated story of how he got his glasses broken again, hands and popcorn going everywhere; and Eddie, sitting on the sinks, had laughed so much he couldn’t laugh anymore and only sort of wheezed. Even Bill, from inside the cubicle, was giggling.

“So there I was, and Mrs Kazinsky is going crazy….” Richie trailed off, one hand still in the air and a frown creeping onto his face. He lowered his hand and looked at it as if he had never seen it before.

“Then what?” Eddie asked expectantly and Richie looked up at him and opened his mouth and closed it again.

“You know what? I honestly have no idea,” he finished lamely, his face an image of surprised and offended sheepishness and Eddie couldn’t help it but cracked up, laughing so much he couldn’t sit up, rocking back and forth on the bench and drumming his heels.

“Aw, Eddie-Spaghetti, it wasn’t _that_ funny,” Richie said, sitting down next to Eddie and easily looping an arm around his shoulders.

“It really was,” Eddie said, wiped his eyes and turned his face towards Richie, and Richie kissed him right on the mouth.

 

Later he was always tempted to tell his therapists that this was were it all went wrong, this was where the corruption started, but he never did because he knew better. It was a child’s kiss, all lips and exuberance and buttered popcorns and Richie laughing gleefully. And anyway Eddie was pretty sure that he was born with the stain, like his asthma and underdeveloped lungs.

 

“Aw,Richie c’mon, that’s so gross!” he had wailed, meaning bacteria and the greasy stains on his face, at the time not even considering that it might mean anything else. Richie was laughing like an hyena and when Bill emerged from the stalls he kissed him too, a wet smacker of a kiss which echoed in the bathroom like a cork pulled from a bottle, before dancing off in search of more popcorn before the second film started (Cat People, which permanently discouraged Eddie from ever going to Serbia, and Bill of owning cats, respectively).

  


 


	2. Third Kiss

3.

Kiss number three was actually a whole lot of kisses but still. It was that last, desperately hot summer just before they both left Derry. Richie was leaving for college in the fall and Eddie would move only a couple of weeks after that. Richie had drifted in and out of Eddie’s life when the Lucky Seven began to disperse, but somehow he was always showing up again, to raid Eddie’s fridge, sling an arm around his shoulder and make him laugh.

 

This summer was so hot that the only time it was bearable to be alive was in the small hours of the morning, the night pitch dark and filled with crickets, wearing as little clothes as humanly possible. For Richie that meant stripping down to his underwear and for Eddie that meant foregoing his knitted sweater vest. Puberty had dealt Richie a pretty harsh blow, shooting up, suddenly tall and unfeasibly skinny and with nothing of that quiet ease he had used to carry as a kid. Puberty had also dealt Eddie a rather harsh blow, in the sense that it had refused to arrive. He was still the shortest boy in his year, and smooth as a baby.

 

They were in Eddie’s bedroom, Richie having climbed up on the drain pipe (he claimed in order to avoid Sonia and Eddie claimed it was because he was a spaz) had thrown himself in an exhausted, sweaty pile on the rug. He had his t-shirt balled up in one hand and his skin was translucent fish-belly pale, his red her damp and plastered to his forehead, his glasses kept sliding off his sweaty nose until he removed them and laid them beside him, the lenses smeared.

 

Eddie thought he looked good, smattering of freckles on his shoulders and soft stomach, ribs rising in and out of his skin with each breath, but then again Eddie always thought Richie looked good. Richie was staring up at the ceiling fan and absently talking about erections.

 

It had become a predictable theme with him ever since he started having them on a regular basis. Eddie had tried asking him to shut up about it, had tried ignoring him, had tried changing the subject, had tried bringing up his own erections in a last ditch desperate attempt at reverse psychology, all of it with no effect. Richie strongly felt that jokes about how painful boxer shorts were when you popped an impromptu boner in the library was jokes to be shared loud and clear with the world. Eddie hoped that when Richie finally blew this joint and became a full time comedian this phase would be over, as there was only so many boner-based jokes you could hear in half an hour and it would also bar Richie from any family entertainment. Eddie was sitting on his desk, leaning back so that the miniscule draft from the open window could provide a hint of a breeze.

 

“Richie, for the love of god, please be quiet,” he said cutting into Richie’s monologue, pinching the bridge of his nose, the overhead light hurting his eyes. “All your talking is making me overheat.”

Richie lifted his head from the rug looking at him like Eddie had just moved Christmas to the middle of summer, just for him.

“Oh man, Eddie-spaghetti are you saying that my dirty talk is making you hot under the collar?” he said with a wide, delighted grin, his eyes way too bright for the heat and the late hour. “Hot and bothered? Giving you a heat stroke?”

“The weather is making me hot you idiot, all you’re doing is making me annoyed,” Eddie shot back, still with his hand over his eyes, hoping that his face was already so flushed a little extra wouldn’t show. “But if you don’t shut up about your permanent hard on I’m gonna..gonna...”

Richie cackled from the floor, lifting his glasses to his face and peering at Eddie through the lenses. “You gonna do what, Eds? Whatchu going to do?”

“I’m going to take care of you,trashmouth, that’s what,” Ed finished, painfully aware of how lame it sounded. He had no idea what he was going to do, only that hearing about it, Richie there on the floor with only a thin layer of cotton on him and all that glorious freckled skin made the heat feel ten times more unbearable and there was a hot prickling sensation running under his skin like fizzy water.

“You are going to take care of me?” Richie singsonged delightedly and got up from the floor, still laughing. Handing this sort of ammunition to Richie was never good, he could go on for hours and hours. He walked over, his body still shivering and shaking with laughter and put his hands on the wall on each side of Eddie’s head, looking him in the eyes. “You are going to take care of me, huh?” he said softly, eyes dancing. And Eddie Kaspbrak lost his good goddamn mind, wound his arms around Richie and latched onto his mouth like a remora fish.

 

Afterwards Eddie would maintain that Richie had flown a foot in the air and shrieked like a little girl, which was admittedly a humiliating response to a kiss but at least the humiliation was evenly shared around. Richie claimed that while he may have been startled, he had absolutely not shrieked like a little girl and that he had been pretty prompt in conveying his support for the idea, once the initial surprise had passed.

 

Conveying his support for the idea meant basically crawling on top of Eddie on the desk,one leg kneeling outside Eddie’s thighs and the other on the floor helping him rub up and down and kissing him like there was no tomorrow. Like a starving man falling on food, devouring it before it could be torn from his hands.

 

Eddie had once made out with Corrine Holden under the bleachers, the most awkward five minutes of his life. He mostly had tried not to freak out about the completely unsanitary act of having somebody else’s tongue in his mouth, weather or not his palms were too sweaty and how the soles of his shoes stuck to the floor and how much the sensation of lips felt like wet rubber. Corrinne had broken off the kiss and given him a pitying look, suggesting that if he’d rather watch the game they could do that. Stan had told him a couple of weeks later that Corrinne Holden was telling anyone who cared to listen that Eddie Kaspbrak kissed like a dead fish and he had been inclined to agree with her. If he had ever thought about kissing Richie, which he hadn’t (he had), that was the point where he got stuck. Would he freeze up, only be able to focus on how gross it was, the minutiae of saliva and germs passed between them? Richie was not likely to want to kiss him anyway, but he’d be even less likely if he kissed like a dead fish. Fortunately this didn’t seem like a problem. Richie, seemed in fact very invested in kissing him, sprawling in his lap, biting and licking whatever he could reach. The points of his fingers gripping Eddie’s shoulder like ten bright spots of pain.

“Eddie spaghetti, you should have told me earlier, we could have been making out since we were ten,” he grinned.

“We could not,” Eddie said peevishly, “I was totally out of your league when we were ten. Also you broke my inhaler.”

Richie turned beet red “That was so an accident! I just stepped on it, I didn’t mean to break it, I just didn’t see it. You gotta let that go man.”

The way he looked at Eddie was ravenous, his eyes glazed and cheeks flushed and even as they spoke he was still steadily rubbing against him.

 

It was a sweaty, feverish act, their hands too hot and sticky to touch but doing it anyway, their noses bumping and teeth clacking. Richie working his thin fingers into Eddie’s pants, uncomfortable and incredible at the same time. Everything was too much, too many textures and sensations for anything to be pleasant but at the same time so addicting it was impossible to stop. Richie rubbing against him a series of helpless,urgent, unintelligible noises escaping his lips until he whimpered and clung on, licking and biting Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie was pressing against Richie’s hand, feeling close to something but unable to get there, whimpering and bucking, until Richie moved his fingers just so and stars burst out behind his eyes, for one moment flung out into an endless ocean of space, coming wet and sticky over Richie’s hand and his own pants. They collapsed in Eddie’s bed afterwards, shoulder to shoulder, too hot to even try the duvet, Eddie asleep even before the buzzing aftershocks and run their course through his body.

 

Richie left Eddies room in the grey dawn, climbing down the drainpipe the same way he had come in, Sonia never any the wiser.

“Go, get out you bastard before my mom comes to wake me up,” Eddie said trying to push Richie towards the window, Richie who was sleepily complaining, pulling Eddie in close, dusting kisses over his nose, eyebrows and ears.

“No, don’t kick me out just yet. I just want to get you off once. I’ll blow you, it’ll be fast, like you’ll be able to last like what? A minute tops?”

Eddie broke off the kissing to give him a sharp look and Richie grinned apologetically at him, his hair wild and glasses askew. There was the beginnings of a hickey on his clavicle.

 

And that’s how Eddie ended up flat on his back on the rug in his childhood room, underneath the lopsided aeroplane model he had once built with Bill, while his best friend was giving him a blow job. By the end he had to muffle himself with his hands, whimpering and gasping, trying not to drum his heels against the floor. He came and Richie yelped in surprise and had to run over and spit violently in the glass of water Eddie kept next to his bed. All Eddie could do was stare at the lopsided model, spinning gently in the draft and trying not to feel how much the world had shifted.

“That was amazing,” Richie said, looking at him wild and a little hungry.

“It was?” Eddie said stupidly, still laid out flat on the floor. It had been amazing but he wasn’t sure how it was on the other end, so to speak.

“Totally,” Richie said confidently and crouched down next to him, his hand brushing up and down Eddie’s bare arm. “I’ll see you later, yeah? If I dont get home before my mom wakes up she is going to have a cow.”

“Just say you stayed here,” Eddie said and Richie stared at him for a second before breaking into slightly hysterical laughter.

“Oh my god,that’s true,” he said. “And all she would say is “Doesn’t mrs Kaspbrak mind? That woman has the patience of a saint.” Holy shit, this is wild, Eds.”

 

He was still chuckling lacing up his shoes and putting his t-shirt back on. “Ok, I’m going now, for real this time,” he said as he was edging closer to Eddie, eying his mouth seriously.

Eddie was pretty sure it was true love, but he was also pretty sure Juliet never had to push Romeo out of her window frantically saying “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off that's my mom’s alarm downstairs. Would you please fuck off right now,” while Romeo tried to lick her eyebrows.

 

Eddie doesn’t have that many memories of Derry and that summer is particularly blurry, spent in an incredulous, blissed out, post-orgasmic haze, his mouth sore and tingling. He remembers disjointed snatches, licking his way up the soft silky skin on the inside of Richie’s arm and Richie’s giggling and squirming under him, his voice going from giggly protests to shallow panting and “nh, oh fuck, stop, don’t stop, dont stop,”.

 

He knows that was just before Richie left for college, and he knows that as the bus pulled out of town that was the last time he saw him until that chinese restaurant in Derry 30 years later, as a middle-aged and sad man with a terrible mustache. He knows that when he and Sonia left for Queens a month later that was the last time he thought of him, the last time he could remember him. He fell asleep on the bus and woke up at gas station in Massachusetts all memories of the Lucky Seven washed from his mind.


	3. Fourth Kiss

4.

Voices were drifting in and out of focus, sometimes loud and clear, sometimes drawn out and booming. Eddie flitted in and out of consciousness, not able to discern one from the other.

 

He blinked, there was a woman sitting in the chair next to his bed, moving his head felt strange and stiff, he blinked again and she was gone. He blinked and there was a nurse in the room and a man with a pinched little nose and the worst moustache Eddie had seen in years.  

 

“Nurse! Nurse!” the man shouted and Eddie tried moving his tongue behind his teeth to form the words “Beep, beep,” but he had to give up halfway and drifted away into the darkness again. The darkness was soft as velvet and quite safe, it was only the light, the deadlights, that filled him with fear, darkness was safe.

 

When he woke up again the room was drenched in sunshine and the man was asleep in the chair, head toppled over and drooling unattractively. It made Eddie want to giggle, although he couldn’t say why.

“You’re Richie,” he said, the words slow and painfully drawn from the dark pool of memory, his tongue stiff and uncooperative, each word forming slowly.

Richie twitched and his eyelids fluttered but he slept on. Slowly the world started filter back to Eddie. He was in a hospital, or so he presumed, there were machines around him and he had an IV hooked up to the back of his hand, something uncomfortable clawing at his nose and sinuses. Outside the door he could hear footsteps and voices. For a moment he felt like a newborn child, without memories or recollections, it was extraordinarily peaceful. He laid there, just breathing, filled with a feeling of safety and hope, the moment stretching like a bright, golden soap bubble. It was very tranquil until Richie woke with a start and nearly fell off his chair.

 

The following days in the hospital was strange. Reality was slightly warped by pain and opiates. They each frequently forgot each other’s names but were even so content to just sit in each other’s company. The nurses would wheel in Mike, and Bill would sometimes bring Audra, still unresponsive, her beautiful face tranquil and far-gazing. Sometimes Eddie could feel as if he could almost imagine what she saw, but his mind always shied away from the recollection.

 

Richie was leaving for the day, visiting hours almost over, standing by the bed saying goodbye. Eddie was almost asleep but not quite. He enjoyed these moments, when it was just him and Richie alone. Richie had his hand loosely curled around Eddie’s fingers, occasionally giving them a little shake to allow for the pretense that it was an extended handshake, rather than holding hands.

“I’ve got to go now, so I’ll see you tomorrow, spaghetti-man,” Richie said, gently reaching out to touch Eddie’s curls, not quite tousling them.  “Man, we got colour your roots, darling” he said with an exaggerated drawl. “They are really starting to show.”

Eddie considered to tell him to fuck off but he was mostly too tired and too content to do much more than peer back at Richie with a sleepy smile, his eyelids getting heavier and heavier as Richie continued to carefully pet his hair. He was almost asleep when Richie leaned over and furtively dropped a small kiss on his head, just by his hairline.

“Sleep tight, sweetheart,” he whispered so quiet it was almost inaudible against Eddie’s skin and picked up his coat and left the room.

It was a strange sensation, the kiss spread a warmth that trickled first down his face and down his spine to his stomach and pooled at his groin in a familiar feeling. Pushing himself up as well he could on his elbows Eddie looked down and then let his head flop down with a mortified thump. He hoped no nurses would come in for a last check-up because the act of showing some poor night nurse his pitched tent would surely have such cosmic repercussions that it would summon the spirit of Sonia Kaspbrak from her body to berate her one and only son for the deed. When he was younger Eddie had been convinced she actually could sense every dirty thought he had, like an internal perv-radar. As he was older he changed his mind to think that she only could read it from his face and done his best never to think about anything carnal when he was around her.

 

On the other hand, since waking up in the hospital Eddie pretty much had not been able to feel or move his legs, the doctors said it was too early and that they couldn’t say anything about the extent of the damage until the swelling had come down so, well, at least he knew one thing was working. And he also was a little chagrined to know that even with a terrible ginger mustache and on the business end of a really bad week, he still thought Richie looked good.


	4. Five plus One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing this was like going "Now...Kiss" and then writing another 500 words of not kissing.  
> Warning for one use of the slur "fags" in this chapter.

 

 

5.

Richie sauntered through the airport gates as if he was still in sunny California rather than a wet and muggy New York, and Eddies insides turned to water as soon as he saw him. He had been fretting, ever since he got the call from Richie telling him he was coming up for a couple of weeks of work, that, maybe he wouldn’t know him. That happened often enough in the hospital to all of them. He would be talking to Richie or Mike and from one second to the next the name would be gone and they would stare blankly stare at each other until one of them broke down and said, I’m sorry I don’t actually know who you are?

It was the worst with Ben and Beverly, who would forget each other’s names daily and then just sit and stare at each other in lovestruck, mooning silence until somebody, usually Richie, yelled at them. In the first week Bev had come in to his room three times and told him the same story about how she’d met the sweetest guy in the corridor but unfortunately didn’t get his name. It was a relief when they had gone, if only because it was less awkward. Everyone was happy for them but would perhaps prefer to be happy for them where they didn’t have to look at it.

 

Eddie has stayed in the hospital the longest, transported back to New York as soon as he could travel, but even so that was long after Richie and Bill and Audra had left.

 

Bill and Audra had come to visit him before they left, Bill’s whole face beaming with happiness.

“We are taking the bike with us,” he declared. “We are never parting from it again.”

As for his diagnosis it turned out Eddie’s spine hadn’t exactly been broken, as much as really, really squashed (severe compression trauma, his doctors told him). There was nerve damage and joint damage and alignment damage and all sorts of damage but after six months of physical therapy he was walking again, albeit with a cane. He was likely to keep it for the rest of his life. He found that he was walking like an old man, slowly and cautiously and that driving the limos, something he still did before Derry, was impossible. He just couldn’t lift his legs quick enough anymore and prolonged sitting in the car seat hurt his back. So instead Eddie threw himself into office work and tried not to look too wistful.

 

It was strange, his whole life his mother had tried to convince him he was sick and now, when his health had taken an abrupt and alarming turn for the worse, she was pretty unperturbed. She treated the cane and the limp as a slightly silly affectation that she indulged in. He was bemused by her reaction but strangely it offered freedom, he had never taken any interest in his asthma as his mother had known all about it, managing the medications and appointments. Now her detachment made it possible for him to go on his own to the doctors and physiotherapist (who was a woman, his mother would be scandalised), and read what he could find and understand.

 

One day Joey called him down to the workshop floor. All of the drivers and office staff had collected around a car, uncontrollable grins on their faces. The company had adapted one of its cars, the foot pedals replaced with hand controlled devices. They were all grinning like loons and Eddie realised that he had been working with them for years and never realised that they cared for him, and he for them.

“You can’t just get in and go, unfortunately,” Joey said, “We have to consult the manufacturer to get the seat adapted just for you, and you have to take a course in hand driven vehicles but it’s better than it was before.”

Eddie took a seat in his car, his eyes suspiciously wet. “Thank you,”he said, over and over.

“Its OK,” Joey said “I’ve only done it so you can go back to driving the late shift, last time somebody threw up in the back seat. And I knew you missed that.”

Eddie gave him a long hard stare and then got out an antibacterial wet wipe and started cleaning the steering wheel.

 

And now Richie was here in New York and it was evident from the way his heart clenched and his stomach rolled over that he would know him. There would be no forgetting this time.

“Eds!” Richie hollered across the airport, because of course he would, and Eddie winced when at least three persons turned to look.

“I’ve told you a thousand times -” he begun but Richie cut him off.

“..not to call you that, I know, I know.”

“Well considering it was literally my dying words I think you would have little more respect -”

“I think, I think you’ll actually find,” Richie said, holding up a finger like he was making an important point, “that, in fact, it was not _literally_ your dying words, but only figuratively your dying words as you, again point of fact, did not die.”

“I thought I was dying!”

“Well I can’t help you there buddy, you should have had better dying words.”

“I should have had _better_ dying words?” Eddie said, his voice raising in disbelief.

“Yes! Absolutely, or learn from history, crab some famous man’s last words and claim them as your own. It’s not as if anyone’s going to call you on it.”

Eddie looked at him speechless and Richie spread his arms, stepped in and hugged him. He smelled of the stale air from the aeroplane and alcohol, presumably also from the plane, which was a little reassuring. Maybe Eddie had not been the only one worried. Holding  Richie in his arms felt unbelievably good, like something slotting into place and for a second the whole airport faded away, only him and Richie remaining and it was entirely without thought that when Richie moved to release him, Eddie kissed him on the mouth. It was over in a second, his body had moved ahead of his brain and when it caught up a jolt of white-hot fear shot through his body from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.  

 

He had kissed Richie.

 

In the airport.

 

Where everyone could see.

 

His vision was greying and he could feel that familiar tightening of his throat, the heavy pressure on his chest signalling an asthma attack. He couldn’t look up, he couldn’t meet Richie’s eyes. Bile was rising in his throat and the thought of sickness, decaying bodies dying before their time, emaciated and hollow, rose before his eyes like specters. The feeling of having given himself away, of being found out was so strong he had to fight the urge to turn on his heel and run. _Girly-boy_ the clown had said.

“It’s great to see you again, Eddie” Richie said, his voice sounding hoarse, like he had run a hundred miles; his fingers brushing Eddie’s jaw and hair almost as if he couldn’t help himself and Eddie flinched. Richie’s face was bright red. Richie blushing as a kid had been a lovely thing, his freckled, translucent skin lighting from within with a rosy glow, unfortunately now it was a strange, blotchy and very unflattering puce. It was absolutely worse than the mustache and Eddie still wanted to lick it. He knew with a depressing inevitability that he would probably also love Richie’s soft stomach, ginger chest hair and terrible, flat, old-man ass and that he would still find Richie helplessly attractive way into his seventies. Eddie bet nobody would sport dentures, skinny legs and a walker like Richie. He felt wretched.

 

“And on your feet too! Come on, give me a whirl.” Richie’s voice was studiously working its way towards carefree, like he was dealing with Eddie’s _faux pas_ by acting as if it had never happened.

“Screw you, Richie, I’m not doing that,” he said, clutching the cane tighter and fighting to stand straighter. He still couldn’t meet his eyes but it was a terrible, terrible relief that Richie was pretending like nothing had happened.

Richie shrugged extravagantly, “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’m going to get my bag and then let’s blow this popsicle stand. Or as the French say, get the heck out of France.”

“Do the French say that?”

“Dont know, I’ve never been. You’d think I’d go to a place where they eat snails? No way!”

 

_Plus one kiss._

 

The next weeks that followed were, to Eddie’s mind, pretty fraught. He did normal things like physio and work and Richie had pitch meetings and coffee meetings and script meetings and all other kinds of meetings, so there were entire extended periods of his life that were Richie-free where life continued as normal. And then there were other times, in the evenings or at lunch when they met up and Eddie had a brief, dizzying glimpse of what it might have been like if he had not forgotten all of his best friends.

 

“Either the wallpaper goes or I do!” Richie said sitting down at the table.

Eddie looked around in surprise, the wallpaper being a muted blue and not very offensive to anyone.

“Whats wrong with it?” he asked bewildered.

“No dummy, its Oscar Wilde’s famous last words.”

“Are you still stuck on this?” Eddie asked.

“Eddie, Eddie, Eddie, “Stuck on this” is such a harsh way to put it. It’s just you I’m concerned about.” Richie said, leaning over the table and looking into his eyes with completely fake earnestness, that nevertheless made Eddies insides squirm and his heart beat double time. “I don’t want you to go to the afterlife with crap last words.” Richie continued gently and patted Eddie’s hand.

“Beep, beep Richie” Eddie said and withdrew his hand.

“Fine, fine,whatever. I’ll back off, you can die with a last comment about the tax return for all I care.”

“Thank you, I will think of something extra boring just for you,” Eddie said, trying to make a joke out of it but to his surprise Richie flinched and averted his eyes.

“I don’t plan to stick around to hear it a second time. Once was good enough for me,” he said, his voice rough and sticking in his throat.

 

They talked about other things after that, Eddie laughing until he had a stitch at Richie’s reenactment of terrible auditions from his youth. The waiters gave them the stink eye and he could only hope they would forgive him if he left a handsome tip. The left the restaurant pleasantly tipsy on laughter and wine, Richie supporting Eddie with one hand under Eddie’s arm, leaning into him now and again. It was making Eddie as giddy as the wine and the laughter.

 

“The cab should be here at any minute, Eds. Let’s get you home to Sonia, right?” Richie said and carefully brushed Eddie’s hair out of his eyes. Eddie just smiled at him, too happy at the moment to protest the nickname. Richie’s body was warm against his and he could feel the outline of it through their clothes in a way that was strange and exciting and made him realize in a drunken, astonished way that actually, underneath that suit Richie was naked and removing it would reveal all that skin he had once known. It was a heady thought that was hard to repress. He wanted to touch too, he wanted to reach out, to brush Richies chest, his vulnerable stomach, his hips, his thighs and all other places of him that were so dazzlingly forbidden. The cab was long in coming and somehow they ended up on the sidewalk swaying into each other. Richies arm had slipped from under his to around his shoulder and his own had wound around Richie’s waist, his head tucked against his shoulder and Richie leaning into his hair. It was nice. He could feel Richie’s breath against his head and how his mouth was slowly inching closer and closer...

“Hey fags! Get a room, not on the fucking sidewalk!” somebody shouted and they both jolted apart.

“Screw you asshole!” Richie shouted back, more for form’s sake than anything else, and Eddie fussed with his shirt and hoped he was not blushing. It had been stupid. He had been stupid to let it happen. Nothing was going to happen anyway, because they were not kids anymore and Richie had probably slept with more women than he could count and Eddie, well, Eddie had not.

 

“Would you look at that? Here’s the cab already,” Eddie said nervously, stepping away from Richie.

 

The car ride back was quiet, Eddie fiddling with his cane and Richie staring firmly out the window. He had the horrible feeling of committing a serious misstep.

 

“Um, goodnight,” he said, stepping out of the car, his mother already standing in the open door of the house looking down the drive. “I’ll see you tomorrow?” the question came out sounding more pathetic than he had intended, and Richie turned and smiled.

It was the show smile, the famous smile, and Eddie hated it.

“Yeah of course, I’ll call you, we’ll do lunch.”

Eddie felt like something that has been scraped off a shoe, Sonia fussed over him and it wasn’t until he reached his rooms that he realised something was shoved into the pocket of his jacket. A slim paperback volume titled “ _Famous Last Words of Notable People_ ”

 

He called Richie the next day.

 _“Here lies the ashes of a man in the habit of putting everything off until tomorrow. However,he changed for the better on his deathbed and did, in fact, die on 31 January 1972,_ ” he read. “It doesn’t quite count, of course, since they are not final words but the inscription on the tombstone of some obscure Scandinavian writer, but I still thought it was pretty funny.”

Richie was quiet for a moment.

“No,” he said. “I don’t like this. I’m your funny guy, you can’t laugh at jokes made by other people.”

“Richie, I hate to tell you this" Eddie said gently, "but just yesterday I laughed politely to a joke made by the girl at the coffee shop.”

“No! You traitor!”

“She’s like nineteen and has a nose ring. I think she learnt to joke at community college.”

“Right that’s it, no more special deals for you. If you wanna hear me be funny you pay for the tickets to my show like everybody else.”

“It might have been about the weather.”

“I’m hanging up, and never talking to you again,” Richie said. “No, wait, we are still on for having a completely humourless, no-jokes dinner tonight? I’m flying out tomorrow so if you can’t make dinner you will have to give me a lift to the airport at the ass end of dawn instead.”

“I’m doing that anyway,” Eddie pointed out. “And I’m not even billing you for it.”

“Ohoho, that’s great to hear. I assume we’re taking the limo?”

“Of course not, that’s for important people. I’m taking my handicap-adapted Mazda.”

“Geez, just my luck, I can’t even score a guy with a handicap-adapted Volvo.”

“Tough luck Richie, you should have taken up with Ben, I hear he drives a Porsche.”

“Which sounds great, if I wanted a mid life-crisis. And getting my ear talked off about the miracle of life.”

“Well, brace yourself, Ben and Beverly are in New York and joining us for dinner tonight.”

“Ugh, great. Do you want to meet up for some pre-dinner food that you will actually be able to stomach? I’m guessing between the nauseating lovey-doveyness and the gruesome baby details I won’t be able to get down a bite.”

“We’ll meet in the bar for some appetizers before dinner. I’ve already ordered.”

“And that’s why I love you,” Richie said cheerily. “I have to run, my assistant is looking ready to behead me, see you tonight!

Eddie looked at the silent telephone, the words “and that's why I love you” echoing in his brain.

In the sewers he had said he loved them, he had confessed he had never been with anybody because there could be nobody in his life that he loved as much as the Lucky Seven. And Richie had said “I can't help you there buddy”. And he hadn't remembered.

 

Eddie could remember. He could remember kissing Richie, The electrical, dizzying feeling, like a drop with no bottom. He could remember being fever-hot, his whole body shivering under Richie’s hands, white sparks behind his eyelids and gasping for air.

 

In college he had once gone to a gay bar, he had ended up shaking in terror in the bathroom unable to imagine ever being so fearless, so open. And then disease, death, like the leper from his childhood rising up to haunt him. He had built fences around himself and the inevitable truth, and it had taken almost dying and real, permanent disability to shake the fear off. And he had thought after Derry that maybe he didn’t need to be afraid anymore, of anything. And now there was Richie, who loved him. And whom he loved enough to fight for. He sat down on the chair next to the telephone, his legs feeling like jelly. If Richie didn't love him like that then fine, he could live with that too, remaining friends would be plenty. But if there was a chance, could he let it go? It felt like throwing himself off a cliff, abandoning everything he had known, for a nearly certain bottomless drop.

 

“Eddie, darling are you all right?” Sonia asked, a full thirty minutes later, finding her son sitting by the phone and staring into thin air.”You look kind of pale, honey,” she said, reaching out to feel his forehead with the back of her hand.

“I’m fine ma,” he said and ducked away from her hand. “I’ll be out tonight, I*ll have dinner with some friends who are in town.”

“You are? You are out an awful lot these days, I must say,” she answered, her tone vaguely reproachful. Sonia Kaspbrak sometimes woke up in the bathroom, her ears pressed to the floor as if listening for something in the pipes, hearing only silence. Eddie was the one thing in the world that was hers and she didn’t know why but she knew she had to keep him close.

“Be sure do dress warmly or you’ll catch your death in this weather. You’re still frail, just like your father…”

She watched her son look up at her, his watery blue eyes under the blonde fringe and the bright, wide smile lighting up his whole face, the way he had not smiled at her since he was five and she grew so terribly afraid.

“Yeah,” he said, “what’s the worst thing that could happen?”

 

Eddie arrived early to the bar, Richie was late so he’s left with an idle half hour nursing his drink and leafing through a magazine. Richie had been doing a lot of press for his new show so was pretty unsurprising when one of them featured an article on Richie Tozier. Normally Eddie wouldn’t read it, listening to Richie brag about himself was unbearable as it was but something caught his eye. It was a photo of Richie and a woman, at a reception holding champagne flutes and smiling at the camera. Richie Tozier and Danaё Richardson, his long term writing partner and collaborator. She was stunning, so beautiful it hurt to look at her, according to the article she was one of Richies oldest friends, from when he was still trying to break out on the stand up scene.

 

Eddie looked up, seeing his own disappointing reflection in the mirror behind the bar. Slight, and blonde, he had tired eyes, and a weak chin, his hair spilling over his forehead like a child. He’s wearing a knitted sweater vest for chrissakes. It wasn’t as if he didnt objectively _know_ that Richie worked in Hollywood surrounded by the most beautiful people in the industry, he’d just...forgotten. Forgotten about himself, awkward, phobic and still living with his mother. The last time he even tried to be close to somebody he’d ended up vomiting. He read the piece with almost sick fascination, scouring for details about Danaё. The article didn’t really straight up say that there was a romantic connection but in the three paragraphs she was mentioned the implication hung heavy. And even if she wasn’t into Richie, he could very well be into her. He liked women, subtly checking them out when they walked past, and even _if_ he liked men, why would he be into Eddie? He had probably forgotten all about their encounter, it was probably blended into all the others he’d had with better, more beautiful people. Eddie had thought there might have been a chance but looking at gorgeous Danaё Richardson he felt that chance fizzle away like a wet matchstick in a New England rainstorm.

 

“Geez, are you actually reading that?” Richie said gleefully startling him out of this reverie. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or offended. Flattered that you are reading of course, but come on, those picture are nothing short of offensive. I hate it when they use picture from last year, I’m in much better shape now.”

“You are?” Eddie said, with numb lips, just saying the first thing that came to mind, unable to get Ms Richardson’s beautiful face out of his head.

“Of course I am, I’m wounded to the core you can’tell. I had a big turnaround last year, quit the drugs, cut down on the booze, started sleeping at night. I’ve lost twenty pounds, you know.”

“Cut down on the booze?” Eddie said, allowing scepticism to color his words.

“If you can believe it,” Richie said tartly and waved the bartender over to order two martinis.

“I think, technically if you cut down from 150 units to a 100 a month, you are still drinking too much.”

“Do you know what Eddie? It’s a funny thing, but that’s what my mother said too!” Richie replied. “Although to be fair, she said it with levels of passive aggressiveness to which you can only aspire.”

“We should introduce her to my ma.”

“Heaven forbid Eddie, it would create a vortex straight down to Hell paved with chintz and cold cream.”

“The devil himself would appear in a puff of Lily of the Valley talcum powder.”

The silently contemplated this grim vision for a while, drinking their martinis, Eddie absently eating the olives off the toothpick.

“So where is the food? I was promised appetizers to line my stomach in the face of the massive binge drinking that I will have to do to get through our dinner with the love birds.”

“Ah come on, cut them some slack. It’s not that bad, you don’t have to sound so resentful.”

“Maybe I am resentful? Not everybody got happily ever after with their childhood crush,” Richie muttered into his glass.

“I think Bill is over Beverly by now,” Eddie replied, chewing the toothpick.

“I didn’t actually mean Bill,” Richie said, in a low voice, hunching his neck and glaring angrily at the bar.

“What? Who?”

“Never you mind it Eddie-spaghetti, let’s just murder some buffalo wings and fries before I starve to death. And tell me more about some good last words you’ve read.”

  
  
  
  


Beverly was, or course, radiant, with a discreet bump that Eddie didn’t know what to do with. Like, congratulations there is somebody in your belly that has to come out under extreme duress, and may or may not grow up to resent you? You probably should not convince them that they have an incurable disease to make them stay close to you? He had no doubts that Beverly would be a great mother though, and she was still herself; talking animatedly about her newest designs and laughing at Richie’s jokes.

“So Richie, tell me something,” she said conspiratorially about halfway through the meal.

“No,” Richie said deadpan. “I absolutely can not get you access to Mel Gibson.”

“Goddamnit, I had such high hopes! No seriously, I might have been reading an article or two about you…”

Eddie could feel his hands go numb and his stomach go ice cold, he gulped down his glass of wine in dread.

“And who is this long term writing partner I’ve heard so much about?” Beverly continued. “You’ve never mentioned her.”

Richie looked honestly confused.

“My writing partner, you mean Danny?”

Thinking about it Richie might have mentioned a Danny once or twice but Eddie had never guessed it was a woman,

“Danaё, yes. She’s gorgeous,” Beverley enthused. “And so well dressed, I don’t know is she has a stylist but you can tell she’s not just dressed in big labels but she has this classic chic that is so difficult to emulate.”

“I... guess? I’ve never asked.” Richie said, nonplussed. “We go way back, she let me stay in her house squat when I moved to LA.”

“You slept in a house squat? Where could you even find one?”

“It was an antique. We were both doing the comedy circuit and when I tried crashing in the basement of one of the clubs she took pity on me and let me sleep on the floor at their squat. It was like this socialist women’s collective, and they were all out picketing things in the days and clubbing at night and planning to go live in a kibbutz.They went to bra burnings and had menstrual blood artwork all over the place. They had a half an hour meeting before they even allowed me through the door. I thought not turning the toilet seat down would be an issue but that turned out fine as they didn’t have any plumbing  and you had to run down to the Chinese takeaway for a piss.”

“You never, “ Beverly laughed.

“No, its true! I slept on a sofa in the basement, it was uncomfortable for the first week and then I just learned to fold around the springs, it was so creaky I could play “Old McDonald” if I just leaned on it right.The front door was barred so the only way in and out of the house was climbing through a back window, which led to the room of this anarcho-feminist lady who was always bringing over her lovers. It was mayhem.”

“But you liked Danny?”

“Oh yes! I was waiting tables and she was trying to write an all female comedy version of _Waiting for Godot_ with talking vaginas and we started writing together and it just went off awesomely. Danny is very straight laced, a total hypochondriac, and such a neat freak, but man, when she lets go she is really funny. She has this fussy, uptight energy that I just bounce really well off just like -” Richie cut himself short, his ears blushing red. “I mean, she’s just, yeah. We have been working together for a long time, that’s right.”

Eddie felt like he might vomit, the affection in Richie’s voice was so warm and clear, and he was so adorably flustered, fidgeting with his cutlery and wine glass. Beverly was beaming at him and even Ben had a fond smile lurking on his face. When Eddie had gotten the memories of the Lucky Seven back it had been like a pain, like sensation returning to a limb that had been numb for so long. To know that he could care that much, could love that much and now he realized how fragile his heart really was. Somebody had refilled his wine glass and now he gulped down the wine in a desperate bid to distract himself.

“Bev,” Ben said “Not everybody appreciates you poking your nose in.”

“Oh I don’t mind,” Richie said hastily “It’s a prize winning nose, top of its class. Besides its on one of my oldest friends to I think its earnt some poking, so to answer your real question, no. Danny and I are not involved, that’s all showbiz gossip. She’s married to somebody else. One of the vaginas from _Waiting for Godot_ actually.”

He smiled at Beverly but when his eyes transferred to Eddie the smile dropped.

“Eddie! Are you all right?You’re white as a sheet!”

Eddie, to his own surprise, giggled. “Now _you_ sound just like my mother, trashmouth.”

Ben and Beverly stared at him and even Richie gave him a sharp look.

“The hell, Eddie Kaspbrak are you drunk?

Eddie looked at his wineglass, which looked suspiciously empty and he tried to remember when he had drained it.

“I… I might have finished that a little quickly,” he admitted guiltily.

“Will miracles never cease,” Richie smiled fondly, “We’d better get some dessert for you to pad all that alcohol out.”

 

When dinner was over Eddie was still more than a little tipsy, his head feeling pleasantly heavy and his fingers tingling in spite having both his own, and Richie’s plate, of tiramisu.

“You’d better come up to my room and have some coffee, old bean,” Richie said soothingly, steering him across the lobby, Ben and Beverly behind them in a heated, hushed exchange. Eddie couldn’t really make out more than a few words here and there.

“...he’s clearly drunk! We can’t just let him go up there….Might take advantage!” Beverly said.

“Jeez Bev, he’s only been wanting Richie to take advantage since they were fourteen. Let the man live a little! Anyway…” and the conversation died out in intelligible mumbling. Eddie focused on Richie’s protective hand at the small of his back and the way the color from the overhead lights bled and smeared the lobby in peach streaks. He had not really been drunk since he took up professional driving, even days he had off it could be necessary for him to come in and cover if somebody else was ill and driving hungover was out of the question. Now things were wobbling and spinning in a way that was reminiscent of his early college days when he had for a short period of time, elated to be out of Sonia’s clutches, tried everything. They said goodbye at the elevator, Beverly giving him a hug made rather awkward by her bump, he was not sure if he was meant to touch it or to avoid it.

“We’re going now but Ben’s got his phone with him so if you change your mind you can just give us a call and we’ll take you home, right?” Beverly said, her eyes strangely intensive as if she wanted to make sure he really heard her.

“Is all right Bev, I just need to sit down a little before I call a cab,” Eddie answered, a little mystified by her strange concern and why she was trying to bore a hole through Richie’s head with her eyes.

“All right mama bear, lets back down now,”  Ben said soothingly as he steered her away. “This is not Days of our Lives.”

 

Richie’s hotel room was all plush white carpets and sofas with huge French balcony doors opening out towards the night and it’s sounds. This being New York the sounds were somebody very drunkenly playing the trumpet, police sirens and somebody else loudly insulting the trumpet player’s mother. It was very soothing.

Eddie sank down in one of the sofas and tipped his head back, closing his eyes. Staying still for extended periods of times hurt his hip, in a horrible sore way that he really didn’t know bothered him until it stopped and he found himself exhausted.

“Hey Ed, don’t fall asleep on me now,” Richie said, one affectionate hand touching his head. Eddie smiled. “‘M not sleeping,” he said. “‘M just resting my eyes.”

“Coffee will be here any minute,” Richie said, futzing around the room, picking up this and that. It was neater than Eddie had expected, a suitcase still opened on the floor and a few shirts draped over a chair but nowhere near the chaos that he would have anticipated.

“Do you remember when we first met?” Richie asked, out of nowhere.

“No,” Eddie answered honestly, he couldn’t, it seemed to him like Richie had always been around, somewhere at the corner of his eye. They had not really been friends before that summer but he had known of Richie long before that, so much that it seemed like there was no time in his life when he had not known Richie.

“What? You don’t? But you gave me shit about if for years! Years, Eddie!”

Eddie cracked one eye open to look at Richie, he looked almost apoplectic with outrage.

“I give you shit about _everything_ , trashmouth. That’s why you like me.”

“So help me, I do,” Richie said almost involuntarily and sat down in the sofa.

“Well, OK, I’ll tell you about it and then you can think about that and yes, just have like a moment because, um…”

“What, did I meet you robbing a grave or what? Wearing ladies’ clothing?”

“No! We were about what, seven or eight? down in Howard’s field, you remember that place?”

 

Howard’s field was an old grassy field in Derry where kids used to hang out in summers and place rounders or baseball or even hide and seek. Eddie used to go there a lot before he became a loser and social interactions was something to be sorely avoided.

 

“And we had moved in from like this nasty old house in the crap part of town to the suburbs and I was there playing baseball and I saw you, from the other side of the field I saw you.”

“You did?”

“Yeah and I knew straight away that I wanted to talk to you, that you’d be good to talk to. You were with Bill I think and maybe Stan, I’m not sure. So I was just making my way across the field and I really wasn’t paying attention to anything and just when I came up to you….”

“You stepped on my inhaler! You broke it! I remember this, was that the first time we met really?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure because I remember trying to talk to you in school and you took one look at me and yelled “Hey, its that kid who broke my inhaler!”

Eddie laughed muffled behind his hands.

“It was a big deal at the time. Ma went nuts about it. I thought you were a bully.”

“That’s not my point, my point is…” Richie cut himself off and fell quiet. His tongue came out wet his lips.

“My point is that I have been a fool for you from the first time I saw you. And sometimes I think all the jokes were just to make you laugh, I always imagine I tell my jokes to you first because I believe that makes them funnier. Even when I couldn’t even remember you I still think I somehow told all my jokes for you...I...I think that’s it, that’s all.”

Edie reached his hand across the sofa and patted the top of Richie’s hand.

“Thats nice, Rich,” he said sleepily. “In fact, I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“It’s the nicest thing I’ve ever said to anyone who’s not my mother, spaghetti-man.”

“Hmm,” Eddie agreed contentedly and settled more firmly against the sofa.

“You didn’t hear a word of it did you?” Richie asked.

“No,no I’m absolutely listening, it was something about Howard’s field and that time you broke my inhaler?..I…” Eddie yawned hugely. “I was listening. To most of it anyway,”

“All right, I’m not even waiting for coffee Eddie, I’m pouring your soaked ass into a cab right now before you hit your heavy sleep cycle. I’ll see you in the morning, all right?”

“All right,” Eddie agreed and fell asleep against the window of the cab to be shaken awake by a stranger on his doorstep.

“Fare’s already paid for,” the driver said when Eddie stumbled from the car and he went from the hallway face first into his bed and into the deepest sleep he had had in years and dreamed about Howard’s field and Richie’s red hair and taped-up coke bottle glasses.

  

 

It was raining and in indeed the ass end of dawn when Eddie pulled up in front of the hotel to pick up Richie.

“Wasn't sure you were going to show up,” Richie said once he had managed to wrangle umbrella, bags and legs into the car.

“I said I would,” Eddie replied, watching traffic for an opening and fingers drumming on the wheel.

“Yeah but you know, after yesterday's… I wasn't sure you’d come.”

“Hmm,” Eddie said and pulled out in traffic. The car was uncomfortably quiet, the sound of the rain and windshield wipers thumping back and forth. Richie cleared his throat.

“If you want to we can forget the whole thing, what I said yesterday. We can go back to just me being the jerk kid who broke your inhaler and not you know, care about the rest.”

Eddie watched the rain streaming down the windows and into the gutter, it had rained like this the day Georgie disappeared and he didn’t understand how he ever could have forgot that.

“I… I have trouble remembering everything about Derry. Sometimes I remember, other times, other things, I forget. I forgot all of you for a long time, not just you specifically.”

“Me too, and didn't even realise I had forgot. Thought I had a normal childhood.” Richie snorted derisively.

“I’ve had a lot of therapy,” Eddie said cautiously.

“I've done a lot of drugs recreationally,” Richie said, “ I understand the effects are much the same.”

“Therapy for uh, um, to stop, to not” he cut himself off, stopped. “For the phobias and the psychosomatic asthma and uh, the h..the h… I thought it all hung together, like a root and if I could pull one thing out the all the other things would come too.”

Eddie had never spoken these words out loud before, but it felt almost casual. His brain was preoccupied with driving, maneuvering the car in the heavy rain and the early morning traffic.

“I see,” Richie said.

“You do?” Eddie asked surprised, he himself had no idea what was going on.

“Yeah,” Richie said and scratched the back of his neck. “Some dogs are best buried eh?”

He sounded tired.

“Maybe,” Eddie agreed and rest of the journey was quiet but more easy, the tension having eased.

 

It was still raining when they reached the airport, the water pouring along the streets.

“I’ll see you,” Richie said awkwardly before getting out of the car. “I just wanted to say that I appreciate that you are not freaking out about this, and I’m really happy that you’re cool with staying in touch”

“Freaking out about what?”

“About you know, what I told you last night?”

Eddie tried to remember what exactly Richie had said last night, replaying the conversation and all he could hear was Richie recounting the story about the broken inhaler, the problem was Richie seemed to have told an entirely different story.

“And what exactly did you tell me last night?”

“About, um, how I’ve been in love with you since we were eight. I did tell you that.”

Eddie’s hands closed around the wheel so hard he could feel his nails digging into his palms, knuckles turning white.

“Do you remember?” he asked, unable to get his voice louder than a whisper. “That summer, do you remember that, when we?” He could feel his own heart beating, loud and heavy as a drum, the only sound in the world.

“Do I remember? Christ, Eddie, what a question.I remember every bit of it,” Richie said sounding just as  shaken and breathless as Eddie.

“Okay,” he answered, hanging on to the steering wheel like a lifebuoy. “Okay.”

“I’ll see you soon, okay Eds? I’ll call as soon as I know when I’m back in New York. It’s been real good to see you.”  Richie reached out in a clumsy gesture to pat him on the shoulder before opening the door and stepping out of the car. On the dashboard the pages of “ _Famous Last Words of Notable People_ ” fluttered in the draft.

 

Richie had managed to get himself and his bag and umbrella across the road when the car roared to life behind him,  shot forward to carry out a nearly certainly illegal u-turn and Eddie pulled up right beside him, the wheels of the car sending a wave of water over Richie’s feet.

Lowering the window with desperate haste Eddie leaned out and yelled “Admiral Nelson!”

“What?” Richie said.

Eddie opened the car door and stumbled out in the rain with such force Richie had to catch him by the elbows to keep him from falling over. Rain was pouring over Eddies glasses and he was looking up at Richie through a curtain of wavy curls.

“Lord Nelson, his last words,” he explained, gripping so hard to Richie's jacket his knuckles turned white.

“Slow down, I’m still not with you here, what the heck is going on?”

“Lord Nelson,” Eddie said with burning eyes, “His last words were “Kiss me, Hardy” but I don’t want those to be my last words.”

“Now wait a minute! Just who the hell is Hardy?” Richie said, voice raising several octaves and Eddie made an exasperated noise like a hissing cat and hauled him in, with surprising strength for somebody who walked with a cane, and kissed him.

 

Eddie’s mouth tasted like rainwater and the hard edge of his glasses were cutting into Richie’s eyebrow and it was painfully clear that he had no idea what he was doing but his lips were soft and his hands, now resting at Richie’s neck were strong and determined.

 

“I don’t want “kiss me” to be my last words,” he repeated when they separated, and for a second he looked every inch the painfully young kid Richie used to know, the one with stupid knitted sweaters and meticulous hair and Richie didn’t know what to do other than hug him and hold on to him, his heart feeling like it might burst.

 

They managed to scramble back into the car, soaking wet and dripping onto the upholstery and getting anywhere was difficult because Eddie couldn’t persuade his hands to let go of Richie. It was ridiculous, and Richie was wet and cold and completely irresistible. In the end they wound up in the parking garage, necking like teenagers.

“We have to stop,” Richie said, leaning his forehead against Eddie’s and catching his breath. “I have a plane to catch and we’ll get busted by airport security, and I’m famous now and I can’t get arrested with a rent boy in a handicap adapted Mazda.”

“I’m not a rent boy,” Eddie protested, fingers working restlessly on undoing Richie’s top shirt button. It was infuriatingly refusing to come undone.

“It’s still homosexual relations in a handicap adapted Mazda.”

“Would the limo have been better or worse?”

“Worse, no, better. No wait, I don’t know, uh, I can’t, uh I can’t think when you do that.”

 

Eddie’s glasses were fogged up and his hair was in disarray and his normally neat clothes were all out of order, and his skin felt so hot he felt like he ought to be steaming. He knew logically that Richie was right, that this was insanity, and dangerous and probably unsanitary but it felt like a pent up river finally coursing through him carrying his fears and inhibitions with it. Right now he just wanted Richie, his tongue, his skin, his hands. Richie, who was having none of it.

“Eddie, Eds, come on stop it. I’m at least a decade too old for car sex.”

Eddie made a frustrated noise in his throat and tried to stop pawing at the crotch of Richie's pants but his hands were slow and reluctant. Beyond the adrenaline and arousal he could sense a yawning terrible fear that maybe Richie wouldn't want him, that this display was too amateurish and eager.

“So what happens now? He asked and Richie sighed and bucked against his hand.

“As much as I'm trying to deflect this with humour, I really feel no strong wish to get arrested for lewd acts in public,” he said.

“We could but you’re just not giving me the chance!” Eddie said indignantly and Richie laughed and groaned at the same time.

“I wish I could just stick you under my arm and onto the plane, home to my house and to bed, which is where you belong. You’d love it there, you could swim in the pool and enjoy the sunshine and be petted and spoilt, and part of me just want to have you right here on the spot, especially if you keep doing that.”

“I'm not a child or a cat, Richie” Eddie said petulantly,but he felt the effect was rather spoilt by letting Richie steal a couple of kisses.

“I’m going to cancel my ticket, “Richie said, fumbling for the words, much in the same way Eddie was currently fumbling at his trousers, “and you are going to take the day off and then we’re going to go back to the hotel and sleep and have breakfast so I can despoil you properly, in a decent bed, at a reasonable hour.”

“Now sounds reasonable to me,” Eddie said and Richie groaned out loud, a deep vibration Eddie could feel under his hands.

“Arrested,” he ground out. “Handicap Mazda.”

“I think your disdain for my car is unreasonable, its very economic. And has a surprisingly spacious back seat.”

“Still not getting arrested in it. Help me out here, I’m trying to be the bigger man and save you from the horrors of car sex.”

“And I'm trying to help you be a big man here but you are not letting me.”

“Jesus Christ Eddie, it this what thirty years of repression gets you, a raving sex-lunatic?”

“Well excuse you for being so zen about it, you’ve probably have had more sex than I’ve had hot meals! I just, just want to get it over with before you change your mind.”

Eddie’s words seemed to hang in the air for just a moment and then he just seemed to deflate.

“It’s not like I don’t know that a virgin who lives with his mom is not the world’s greatest catch, OK? And it’s not just that I’ve never loved anyone enough to let them get close, it’s also that there hasn’t been anyone that has wanted to. I mean they are not exactly lining up around the block for me,” he said bitterly staring at his hands. He wished he could take it back, the last thing right now that he wanted was to sound needy and weird.

 

But Richie didn’t laugh, instead he reached out, pulling Eddie close so he could kiss him, the corners of his eyes, the lines around his mouth, his nose and temples. All soft and close, nothing like Eddie ever imagined.

“I’ll not fucking change my mind, OK?” He promised, low and fervently, unusually serious. “I’m no great prize either so don’t sell yourself short, you look pretty good from where I’m standing.”

“Sitting,” Eddie corrected with a sniffle.

“Baby you always get me standing,” Richie said with a roguish grin. “However I’m making the executive decision that your first time will _not_ be in the airport parking lot, and I think you should appreciate that. You should hold out for the whole lighted candles, rose petals and Barry Manilow deal.”

Eddie giggled wetly.

“If you put it like that I think I should save myself until the wedding.”

“That’s more like it. Make me work for it Eds, you know what they say about cows and milk.”

“What? That you should never call them stupid nicknames? Or the other one about trying to milk a cow that’s still living with its mom?”

“Such a small mind spaghetti-head, that's what hotels and dirty weekends are for, and as you will also find out, real estate agents. Lovely people, I’ll introduce you to some and we’ll solve all your problems.”

Eddie fumbled in his pocket for his fiber cloth and wiped his glasses, pushed his wet hair out of his eyes, and tried putting himself back together.

“I’m not totally innocent, have watched porn you know,” he said in a misguided attempt at asserting himself and regretted it as soon it was out of his mouth. Richie however didn't seem to mind, only stared at him with dark eyes and wet mouth.

“I can believe you just can say things like that and then drive a car.”

“What, that I like to touch myself when watching porn?”

Richie closed is eyes and full on shuddered in the passenger seat, hands twitching towards his crotch.

“Oh sweet Jesus,that's it,I'm only human.  Pull over, I'm having my way with you right here on the side of the road.”

To know that Richie wanted him was a giddy, stupid thrill.

“Absolutely not, you convinced me. I'm holding on to my pledge ring now. Pure as the driven snow.”

Richie glanced at him from the passenger seat.

“I know this is besides the point, but do you even have a pledge ring?

“No, but I could get one, especially.”

And Richie smiled and reached out, catching his hand and kissed it.

“I’d like that,” he said softy

And the sweet mood stayed until Eddie gently retrieved his hand and wiped it off with an antibacterial wet wipe.

“For all I know Mel Gibson could have given you herpes,” he said and Richie laughed.

“Oh Eds, just you wait. The only one who’s ever given me herpes is your mom.”

And it was, Eddie reflected, probably true love but all the same he bet Juliet never had thrown used antibacterial wet wipes at Romeos cackling face at six in the morning at JFK. More fool she.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The only reason I know about Nelson's last word being "Kiss me Hardy" is because of Kate Beaton. Fritiof Nilsson Piraten's tombstone really bears that caption, but in Swedish obviously. It is very unlikely that this would be known in the US in the 1990s. There is a book titled "Famous Last Words of Notable People" but its published in 2017 so I'm going to guess its not that one used here. Groucho Marx's last words are alleged to be: This is no way to live!


	5. An Infinite Number of Kisses

 

Eddie was downstairs, napping in the shade by the pool, sunglasses and hat on to protect his delicate skin.

 

Richie was packing up his house, he had never expected to lose the fight about weather to live in L.A or New York, thinking it wasn’t really going to be a fight between living in the sunshine with the most glamourous people on earth, or slogging along in a city where it was so cold ice crystals formed on your ass six months of the year and “fuck you” counted as a civil Good Morning, but he had been cruelly surprised when Eddie had refused to move.

 

“I’m not going to come out to my ma, move in with a man _and_ leave town on her all in the same week,” he’d said, hands on his hips and a fierce scowl behind his gold-rimmed glasses.

“Eddie, knowing Sonia she might totally disown you! Have you thought about that at all?”

“What does it matter? She’s so forgetful now that she’ll have to disown me every time I come over,” Eddie had shouted right back. And that had been the end of that. Richie personally thought it was fucked up, but as he also thought it was fucked up to live with your deranged Munchausen-by-proxy mother your whole life, so his opinion obviously didn't count for much. He was just glad that he had persuaded Eddie to actually move out, rather than himself being forced to move in with Sonia.

“I have built a life there you know,” he had said and Eddie shrugged.

“Whatever,” Eddie said callously “New York will be good for you anyway. Great opportunities for a comedian.”

“As if LA would not have great opportunities for anyone in the limo business” Richie had groused.

“As if I would want to drive famous Hollywood people around all day, I've enough with you as it is.”

 

Eddie scowled often, carried hand sanitizer and slept in ridiculous pyjamas. He was passive aggressive, effeminate and fussy, he cried at sad movies and took forever with his hair in the mornings and Richie couldn't love him more. He was getting despoiled in fits and starts, his blonde head against Richie’s pillows, making out in the kitchen in the mornings; Eddie slowly growing bolder and more demanding. Nobody was in a particular rush.

“Danny says virginity is a social construct anyway,” Richie said.

“Danny also says the moon landings didn’t happen,” Eddie replied deeply unimpressed, which Richie had to admit was a fair point.

It was after a particularly vigorous bout of deflowering that Eddie had thrown on a shirt and gone down to the pool on still wobbly legs and promptly passed out in the shade, leaving Richie with about a million boxes and three slow cookers he never knew he had.

When Susanne, Richie’s agent, had found out he was moving to New York to live with a man she had sighed deeply and gone off muttering about how at least it wasn’t dead prostitutes in the pool. Richie was sort of afraid to ask.

 

Throwing one glance through the window at Eddie, Richie decided that the last couple of boxes could take care of themselves and went down to the pool. He managed to squeeze himself into Eddie’s sunlounger, ignoring the complaints and Eddie half hearted attempt to elbow him in the ribs.

“I've remembered something,” Eddie said sleepily.

“You've left the oven on in New York?” Richie asked and tried to get comfortable, chucking his shoes off.

“Ha ha. No, about Derry. You used to carry a spare inhaler. If I forgot mine or it ran out, I gave you a spare one and you always had it on you.”

“Really? I don't, I don't remember that.”

“Well, what I'm saying is I really should have figured out you were in love with me a lot earlier.”

“You really should have, but then again I have never loved you for your brains. Only for your looks, so I guess you have about two good years in you before they start to go.”

Eddie yawned hugely and stretched in the sunlounger, the armrest digging into Richies back but he was too happy to move. Twisting around, Eddie managed to land a kiss on Richie's temple and gave his head a conciliatory pat.

“That’ll be two years longer than you’ve kept yours so I guess can’t complain,” he said and Richie didn’t really have any other choice than to hold on and kiss him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has left kudos or a comment. It really is everything and every one makes me burble with glee.  
> talk to me: hellolittleogre.tumblr.com  
> I don't have a beta reader so I usually go through and correct and clean up as I go along, hopefully nothing too bad has slipped through.


End file.
